"Generally
speaking, of the so-called ‘Beat Generation’, it is the names and creativity of
its male protagonists that are most familiar to us, and whose lives and works
have been extensively documented, lionised, and mythologised. But there were also, among this company of
free-thinkers-and-livers, women too.
Lovers, wives and partners, surrogate mothers, and sisters, some of whom
tried to keep hearth and home in some kind of order midst the turbulence of the
wake created by the trajectories of the lives of those they loved.

Among the women who were part of, or
associated with this group of poets, writers, painters, musicians,
street-vagabond-drug addicts, outsiders and hobos, was an angel of the edge. One who put herself out there where many an angel
would have feared to have trod. Her name
was Janine Pommy Vega, who, as a very young woman became close friends with
most of the prominent members of this older generation of ‘Beats’, who bedded
her, initiated her into drugs, and more importantly tutored her in literature
and thought, and a way of life that was a riposte to the stifling and
meaningless materialism of the conventional bourgeois lives they were born
into.

Janine, or Janina in Polish, blossomed
within this creative coterie, into a fine poet, writer, traveller, lover,
sometimes-recluse, and quester for the truth of herself, in the form of love,
both in the human realm among her many male muses, and in her search of the
embrace of the Absolute or Divine. The
insistence of her ‘chosen’ path, that had actually chosen her, was the need for
her to constantly travel to the edge; to put herself at risk; to test every
sinew and thought in her enquiry into her own nature through the art of living
and the craft of poetry. In her pursuit
of this knowledge, she travelled widely, both terrestrially around North and
South America, Europe and Scandinavia, giving readings, writing, teaching,
meditating and generally hanging-out; and into those deep hinterlands within
her own consciousness. All the while an
enquirer, an observer, experiencing both realms with her intellectual,
emotional and spiritual antennae ever-sensitive to the world around her – both
the visible and the invisible. Making
home wherever her path took her, “…for home is a far place, and the place at
hand. I carry them with me, my home and
my wanderings.”

Here in this beautiful book – a tribute to
Janine – designed and produced with the care and attention of ones who were
intimate friends of hers, Bob and Susan Arnold at Longhouse Publishers, we find
writings, papers, notebooks and photographs left after her death. To read the contents and look at the photos,
is like peering onto the desk and into the drawers of Janine’s own workspace. Here is the poet’s temenos, with the evidence of the processes of her thinking,
recalling, creating, adjusting and rewriting.
Occasionally with offcuts of her craft left lying about the place,
marking her path – her heroic journeying towards catching a glimpse; a
reflection; an echo of her true nature.

Love was her vocation, both in her finite
relationships with others, and finally in the infinite embrace of the
Other. Each dwelling within the learned recognition
and acceptance of herself. A beautiful
woman poet who experienced that divine affliction – that ‘fine madness’ – the
temptation to BE. As she herself wrote;
“…the woman Ferocious in her heart for love/And Poet, blessed with the
necessity to go on seeking…”

A poem (or more) will be offered by the hour or with the day and at the very least once a week. So stay on your webbed toes. The aim is to share good hearty-to-eat poetry. This is a birdhouse size file from the larger Longhouse which has been publishing from backwoods Vermont since 1971 books, hundreds of foldout booklets, postcards, sheafs, CD, landscape art, street readings, web publication, and notes left for the milkman. Established by Bob & Susan Arnold for your pleasure.The poems, essays, films & photographs on this site are copyrighted and may not be reproduced without the author's go-ahead.

Lunatic Drawings by Bob Arnold

Link to the Lunatic Drawings PDF for a free preview

The Woodcutter Talks by Bob Arnold

Available from Longhouse. Please link on the image for ordering information. Drawing from years of poetry and also new poems, The Woodcutter Talks is Bob Arnold at his finest branching love poems with back country work poems and settlement with community, family and individual portraits. The extensive collection also showcases vintage photographs from woodcutters and woodchoppers and big-saw-pullers of old. Sweat runs down the cheeks of the mere literary and they adore one another.

Stone Hut by Bob Arnold

"Once again, my friends, this is your best book! Exquisite in design, fat enough to be a feast, pretty enough to just wade around in, but deep enough to dive into and stay with, all I can say is WOW, you guys really did it – it’s the first of its kind, a scrapbook novel that is also a how-to and a mystery -- how did he do it, and how does he make rocks balance like Thor? — Gerald Hausman" ~

Link to this review of "Stone Hut" by Bob Arnold

Museum, by Bob Arnold ~ new from Longhouse

Museum, An Unlikely Meditation, written by the poet Bob Arnold, is as much an unlikely novel. Visit this page for details.

Cid Corman's Of, Volumes 4 & 5 from Longhouse.

ANNOUNCING. The final volumes to Corman's opus in one book ~ of, volumes 4 & by Cid Corman. 1500 poems, 850 pages edited by Bob Arnold, now available in a limited edition from Longhouse, 2015. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information ~

Walking Woman with the Tambourine is the final book of poems by Janine Pommy Vega.

"Walking Woman with the Tambourine is the final book of poems by Janine Pommy Vega. The author completed the manuscript and left it as she wished with her executor Bob Arnold … New and available now from Longhouse ~ Poetry. 144 pages. Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the image for ordering information

John Bradley's "And Thereby Everything"

L O N G H O U S E is very proud to announce a new book by John Bradley in their on going series of S C O U T book publications — other titles from the series have been by Kent Johnson, Janine Pommy Vega, James Koller, Bob Arnold and Lorine Niedecker with more in the works. An opening salvo at the front of the book by Patrick Lawler should provide ample cover for what the reader should come to expect. And Thereby Everything John Bradley Longhouse 2015 First edition only issued in softcover 208 pages, perfect bound illustrated throughout by Bob Arnold with 150 photographs

Dudley Laufman : Bull & More Bull

Visit this page for information on this new Longhouse by Dudley Kaufman (2016)

Dudley Laufman's Islandian Poems

The Islandian Poems & Fables Dudley Laufman Longhouse 2015. 72 pages, perfect bound. Please link on the image to purchase this new title from Longhouse.

MIRZA ABD AL-QADER BIDEL / ROBIN MAGOWAN ~

New from Longhouse. Please click on the image

New from Longouse ~ Robin Magowan

New from Longhouse. Robin Magowan. The Garden of Amazement, Scattered Gems After Sâeb. large softcover glossy bound with an introduction by the translator, 112 pages

Duo by Bob Arnold — New from Longhouse Please link to A Longhouse Birdhouse for more information

DUO Bird Poems by BOB ARNOLD. New and available now from Longhouse ~ 92 pages. Perfect bound softcover. Please link on the cover image for details & Paypal payment information PLUS more from Longhouse

Start With The Tree by Bob Arnold

New in 2015. Building a marriage, building a family, building a small barn out in the woodlands together as a family, as a marriage, and seeing the roof go on. Over 150 color photographs

Beautiful Days by Bob Arnold

Beautiful Days ~ new poems of living and working in the Vermont woodlands and to Hurricane Irene

Yokel by Bob Arnold

[from "Yokel, A Long Green Mountain Poem" by Bob Arnold] ~ that and more at Bob Arnold webpage of books & poems: Please link on this image for more

Go West by Bob Arnold

Filled with poems and travel photography — shares one cross-country trip the couple took in the mid-1980s to California from Vermont.

"I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me" by Bob Arnold

from Bob Arnold's new book "I'm In Love With You Who Is In Love With Me" ~~~~~~~40 years of love poems

"Rain Bear" by Bob Arnold

Bob Arnold's first children's book "Rain Bear" New and available now from Longhouse ~ 50 pages. Perfect bound softcover with photographs ~ & drawings by Jason Clark